{"id":70658,"date":"2025-12-04T05:55:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T05:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/70658\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T05:55:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T05:55:42","slug":"trump-formally-pardons-former-honduran-president-juan-orlando-hernandez-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/70658\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump formally pardons former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

(CNN) \u2014 President Donald Trump has formally pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, according to his attorney Renato Stabile.<\/p>\n

Trump had announced his intention of granting a \u201cfull and complete pardon\u201d to Hern\u00e1ndez last week in a move that erases a major US drug-trafficking conviction for a onetime US ally.<\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez has been released from prison, according to his attorney. A US Bureau of Prisons database also shows that the former Honduran president was released from a prison in West Virginia.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn behalf of President Hernandez and his family I would like to thank President Trump for correcting this injustice. President Hernandez is glad this ordeal is over and is looking forward to regaining his life after almost 4 years in prison,\u201d Stabile added in a statement.<\/p>\n

President of Honduras from 2014 until 2022, Hern\u00e1ndez was convicted and sentenced<\/a> last year to 45 years in prison and given an $8 million fine by a US judge for drug trafficking offenses.<\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s wife, Ana Garc\u00eda de Hern\u00e1ndez, said in a social media post that her husband was a \u201cfree man\u201d thanks to Trump\u2019s pardon.<\/p>\n

The White House on Monday defended Trump\u2019s plan to pardon Hern\u00e1ndez after facing criticism that granting clemency to a convicted drug trafficker ran counter to their ongoing pressure campaign against drug cartels in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a clear Biden over-prosecution,\u201d press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. \u201cHe was the president of this country. He was in the opposition party. He was opposed to the values of the previous administration, and they charged him because he was president of Honduras.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as CNN has reported,<\/a> prosecutors accused Hern\u00e1ndez of conspiring with drug cartels during his tenure as they moved more than 400 tons of cocaine through Honduras toward the United States. In exchange, prosecutors said, Hern\u00e1ndez received millions of dollars in bribes that he used to fuel his rise in Honduran politics.<\/p>\n

Though the Trump administration is blaming the Biden administration, Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s brother was actually prosecuted<\/a> by Emil Bove during Trump\u2019s first term in office. Bove then served as Trump\u2019s personal attorney before becoming a federal judge nominated by Trump.<\/p>\n

There were several people in Trump\u2019s orbit lobbying for Hernandez\u2019s pardon, including his longtime ally Roger Stone, who said he called on Trump in June to pardon him and claimed he was targeted by the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

The-CNN-Wire<\/p>\n

\u2122 & \u00a9 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

\u200bCOPYRIGHT 2025 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(CNN) \u2014 President Donald Trump has formally pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, according to his attorney…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5742,12053,115,139,141,140,12054,278],"class_list":["post-70658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-national-politics","tag-national-and-world-news","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-shareable-stories","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}